Wei Zhiruo had spent most of her life like a rootless duckweed – afloat a seamless dream. Seldom stopping to refrain her heart and listen to its quiet voices or to its urgent protests. As a result, when silence did dawn upon her, by chance and by good fortune, she was left overcome with resounding discomfort, fixed stiff in speechlessness.
As the only child of her father, with a crown to claim – more than that, a dream to fulfill; a dream that had been dreamt by so many souls, and by so many minds that its brevity was only more obvious, its enamor all the more grievous - a life with only her own wants and needs was completely foreign to her. Her birth was a callous cause; she was told that she was to be nothing but hope from day one.
"As our future queen, no...rather as the last seed of our bloodline - you cannot be selfish and only think of yourself. No! You must dedicate your life to regain us some hope. Child, I ask a lot of you - but you should know that since your Awakening, you ceased to be just a mere crown princess of our kingdom. Now, your duties lie elsewhere...in revitalizing our dying world-" A soft, apologetic voice reverberated.
"Why me?"
Because an oracle had sentenced her to that fate, someone had answered. Right on the day she was born, she was declared the 'key' to revitalize her dying world. How would she do that? No one knew. But she must be able to do something and that was the most common belief of everyone.
Growing up, she had heard of this grandeur of her fate. Of its wonder and how much luck she had because she was the last and the only one who could hold such a key to this glamorous fate-the last of her bloodline! She was to be the enigma, the only hope – a hope for her clan, as well as all the people inside her kingdom alike. A hope that could bring them out of their senseless mortality and make them all Immortals again- place them at a pedestal from where the horizon would never shrink, and where the day would in its glory and glamor encapsulate power and eternal life for all and that, for eternity.
Everyone had a share in that enigmatic dream. Maybe, in the beginning she might have held a place in it too-! Now, no more of that.
For a while Wei Zhiruo couldn't help but refrain from remembering those things from her past life. She tried to stop thinking altogether – a desperate move to shirk thoughts that never left her, but unfortunately she didn't succeed for long. There was an urgent need to sort out every possible mystery of her past life that was eating her up from inside.
Alas! Finally defeated by all her own efforts that seemed to be going nowhere, she let herself fall back, wordless, over the canoe – now, floating amidst huge blooms of violet water lilies . All while still refraining to accept that faint loss of connection her death had brought to her. That would definitely take some time, she thought.
The flowers, though, were blooming spectacularly. Splattered amongst lotuses of warmer hues – blossoming so sagaciously in their unaltered grace and purity, so brightly and breathtakingly in their bewitching potency, that it seemed for a moment at least, as if they were ready to transcend their mortal ties. Everything was just short of achieving a miraculous beginning - like her own life had this sweet morning.
Wei Zhiruo straightened her neck, cradling them in between her folded arms. She was lying down with her back against a seldom used canoe. Probably abandoned by the shore.
In fact, it was all chance encounter that she could have even found such a spot, so well-hidden and quietly tucked between abandoned courtyards, and ghostly looking chambers and corridors. Such was the state of abandon in here that she had even spotted a pillar almost leaning down, just awaiting a simple push to come toppling down with all its roof and walls! She had never seen such a state of ruin before. Not inside an inhabited place at least.
While she observed her surroundings, Wei Zhiruo continued to struggle to control her thoughts. In a while, her body seemed petrified almost, not due to the cold of the night but her mind being forced to enter a state of deep meditation.
If there was a person standing by the shore at this moment, he would in all faith - after ignoring those random flickers of agony, or twinges of great forbearance that emerged on her features – take that child as the most fairylike observer of that beautiful nightscape and its various pleasures: the moon, and enchanting breezes swimming over senses...everything.
Or maybe even a reluctant part of it. From afar this glimpse of her reverie filled desolation looked something of a lore. If one followed her tiny shadow flickering on silvery moonlit water, they might even hastily declare her a phantom or a nymph. Although neither of these descriptions would have suited her most in her detachedness or done justice to the workings of her consciousness embroiled in a storm. But it would suffice to capture that wandering imagery of which she became a reluctant part of.
In that state of half abandon, enhanced by deep meditation, Wei Zhiruo was immersed in investigating every part of her own body; from her physical body to the state of her own soul. But while she was busy doing that, a range of 'thoughts' floating around herself kept filling up inside her. She felt herself becoming too stifled in them. To such an extent that she could hardly breath! She huffed, and broke out of her meditative state.
The girl sat up and took in deep breaths to calm her mind.
'Now, there is no way but to let them go,' Wei Zhiruo thought.
Although the risk of letting her thoughts loose were great and with tasteless aftereffects, she couldn't help but let them loose. Deciding that, she didn't wait for long. A floodgate opened up and crushed through her pores. It was sudden. Several shock waves raged through her body and Wei Zhiruo hit the bottom boards with a thwack, falling right on the back of her head. She stifled a cry -
She really had not anticipated this overcharged, zealous sort of thrumming anxiousness!
She thought, and kept thinking of all kinds of things. And all she could do for some while was think…and think some more! Thoughts filled the crevices of her unaligned soul, some echoing with harsher intensity than others. If she were to escape from their clutches at this moment, she might as well have a better chance to just abandon her bodily cage! Thoughts fed her, clothed her and watered her self – drowning her in themselves. What it exacted, it echoed and with unwavering force in belief. The cacophony of its rage dawned over a worn-out Wei Zhiruo. As she tried to balance her aching feverish body against the swaying boat, a torn and crushed soul thrummed and throbbed. Shivers never ceased wreaking havoc inside her body, she was shaking quite badly by the moment her thoughts properly found their usual pace.
But before that it was painful, all white for some while. The implications weren't good – a strong ache thundered through her body, almost dislocating her from her languid repose. If she hadn't been on the look-out for it, the silent night might have echoed with her resentful cry like a vengeful ghost!
Fortunately, she had suffered worse - this little bit of discomfort could still be suffered through without crying. She clutched the boats side-boards and didn't let the raging waves of pain shaking her body affect the boats outside equilibrium.
Wei Zhiruo opened her red eyes, filled with traces of water and flooded in pain. She had a hard time concentrating, but finally settled on one stream of thought rather than letting her mind do its thing and jumble up all sorts of information. She filtered images from her past life, shrugging away memories attached to them or the thoughts that floated on the surface.
All those secret liaisons, holed up meetings with her loyal friends, or some moments spent under the warm light of her father's magnificent library - a piece of her heaven…
Or a much warmer image of herself, sitting on a terrace basking in the sunlight of a clear Autumn day, brushing her fingers in white fur…a leaf fell, and she looked up and someone close to her said- "And what about tea? Won't you have some of that?"
She couldn't recall if she had agreed or not, or just sat there lingering in the soft sunlight, and let that peace fill her up to her brims. But this sudden image stuck in her mind. She forgot to breathe. When she took in a gulp of air to assuage her aching lungs, her eyes were too red to hold down tears trickling down. She forced herself to turn away and think of some other thing. The stream of thought lost its track, and she redirected them elsewhere.
She ended up thinking about some of the past betrayals; some of them imprinted on her mind. Eyes still flushed with stale disbelief, and a mind winding through events of the past, Wei Zhiruo was painting each scene, each conversation, each insult she had heard.
She tried to understand what had happened just a day ago, but which now was a matter of a previous lifetime. Hilarious.
Wei Zhiruo knew for a fact that all those who had driven her past madness were somewhere else, not even here. And god forbid-! If ever there was a time which brought them in front of her again…but, it would never be the same. It will be long past her current suffering. It was worthless to chase a fate so clearly set in stone, right? She couldn't just go back in time and make them suffer a fate worse than death?! Could she? What she had left for them as a part of her revenge should suffice - right, right?!
Before waking up, she recalled, she was under the cursed altar of that pond in her own world. Chains abound, clutching her feet and hands dragging her down to drown in that sacrificial water. Not only pain, the shame of inevitability of all that had happened – purging of the Sangtchi clan, the mutiny after her father's death, the enthronement of her step-brother instead of herself, or the council's decision to make her a sacrifice to seek Immortality – all while no voice appeared to oppose them, no hand rose with arms to symbolize even a semblance of a protest...nothing.
These wounds won't heal on their own, would they? No. But the thoughts must settle down to a silent whisper. Time will heal, like time does. Something magical had happened in between all those betrayals by the way. She was awake again, in this mortal shell. But how and why – magical indeed, were the chains of fate which had dragged her to this bizarre place. Would she ever know its cause?
A strange song seemed to have raptured amongst the night wind, amongst the grasses by the shore, and by the leaning willow's tresses; as if resounding with her wandering thoughts it rippled seamlessly and fed to her soul, easing some of its burden. The breeze felt sweeter with the gentle voice of rippling water, the moonlight – like a heady mead. Wei Zhiruo glanced at the shore, her eyes a little less colder, while her thoughts settled down from their furious rampage. She remained silent like that, enjoying the medley of nature playing its perfect tunes.
Wei Zhiruo lay back comfortably, cradling her head between her folded hands.
'Jinghai was it?', she wondered. The people called it that. A small settlement of some thirty thousand people. She had counted the heads and was almost sure of that. She didn't know much about other things – but the rain filled much of her first impressions. The continuous rain from morning to dusk had been a nuisance, as well as a strange phenomenon inside her mind. In the past, those familiar cold winds, the frequent snowfalls and untimely springs of her own Capital city was all she knew of. The humidity, the mourning in the air – a strange melancholy that comes accompanied by a shower, rooted in no time, slipping down to her bones. Everyone of these sensations was new. Whether she liked it or not, she couldn't form an opinion but it was a change she could deal with.
Tonight, the rain had finally stopped. The night sky was uncharacteristically clear. The several weeks of downpour had grumbled down. From rolling mists and tumbling gray clouds, its majestic rage had softened to an amiable shower at noon and then, like a bad-tempered friend on his grumpy day off, it had swiftly flown off to distant lands, carried along by distant winds, in some delirium of an adventure, perhaps.
On his leave, though, the weak sun had certainly dried off some of the earth's surface back to its original appearance. Yet some bespattered weeds and swamps of wetland, wet corners remained here and there. Some carriages carried by grumpy horses could still, by ill-fortune of their master or by their own good-humor, find several pits of their choices to overturn into. Though such a situation was tasteless for most who met them, accidents of this kind were far from being settled down, as soon as the rain stopped.
Wei Zhiruo alone had seen two carriage accidents since opening her eyes this morning. These carriages were particularly headed towards this manor, rushing along with other such five and six specially crafted and suited carriages with elaborate emblems of clan holdings. One had overturned around the peripheries of Jinghai, while the other one had successfully driven off somewhat nearer to the town gate, but collapsed horrifically with an oncoming carriage just a little away from the manor.
There was a great fuss at first. The mansion and its vicinity, buzzing with onlookers of every kind and nature had caught her attention for some time, especially the hullabaloo and festive shock that the accident caused in its surroundings. That was something new. She had observed them, the crowd, as some servants had waited and welcomed guests inside the manor, while some others had run around to arrange for a rescue and look after the terror-struck occupants who had escaped, fortunately, unscathed.
"Strange day," Wei Zhiruo surmised, a little light heartedly, recalling the faces of some peculiarly dressed men in humble clothes and their guffawing faces as they pointed straight at noble men in clearly superior fabrics, laying smattered in mud, with noisy chatters of crowd and neighing of an angry horse in the background.
Shaking off those amusing scenes from noon, she started looking around wherever her consciousness could reach at present.
In her past life, her Spiritual consciousness had once covered even her whole nation. But since there were wounds visible and clear on her soul…she didn't think it could cover that much right now. Maybe after she picked up her previous cultivating techniques, it would heal on its own. But that would take very, very long mortal years…
Although she did map out this complex town of Jinghai, with its many gatherings and peculiar architecture in the day, she hadn't tried to see what actually lay outside the fortress very carefully. There were several village settlements nearby in the suburbs, as well as a vast forest stretching out in the west from the brim of the northern mountains. The mountain range itself was majestic; cradling the whole valley in a half moon like shape, it stretched in the north and all the way down the east, into the south. It was a vast region, full of many peculiar topographical features, which she definitely couldn't map out in a single day, even with the help of her spiritual consciousness! Wei Zhiruo decided to do that in the following week. Right now, she just wanted to leisurely find something to distract herself. Either way, it was a good source of distraction.
Actually, in such moments of thoughts exploding in her head, those thoughts dared not leave her sight and she of them, but in the midst of this tussle for power and sovereignty between themselves, she usually tried to find a distraction to ease some of those ravenous observations and stop thinking of at least some things, stop some images from haunting her endlessly. As such she didn't feel that she was wasting her time in fancifully chasing a fish. That fish just happened to jump out over a reflection of the moon - what a beautiful sight!
In the mirror-like water filled fields of suburb, many small fishes and their fries had imperceptibly broken into hinterlands. Seeing them, she was unconsciously reminded of some more memories from home. Once, and only once, she had got the chance to observe them – her human subjects from up close. The human in their breast, the culture and traditions of their humble selves, and the strange pride and vanity that divided them into groups – she had found their children to be the most peculiar of the bunches. Children, who used to be delighted by the simplest of gifts and rejoiced in its easy gains – particularly when the bounty had anything to do with hunting, climbing trees or catching bird's egg from the trees of their liking. She recalled back those simple faces and hearty smiles with a strange bewilderment.
If this world had children who entertained in similar pleasures, Wei Zhiruo felt that the coming morning, with its warmer hues and softer showers and its uncountable promises of goods in form of warmer sunlight – in all likelihood was going to welcome a hoard of children and all of them eagerly ready, prancing and rushing about those muddy waters in no time. They will be eager to catch some fishes: a game which promised them a taste of a one-time meal which would be filled with meat. A luxury in hard times. And hard times for some people seemed to never end. It was always hard times.
'The world is brimming with vitality, and yet strangely the spring is so far away,' Wei Zhiruo couldn't help but sigh, as she swept her spiritual senses all around Jinghai.
Her spiritual senses swept over the farmers in their hot-beds, curled to early comfort. There were archers up in the high towers of the city fortress with their longbows polished and ready to move, gazing with their hawk-like gazes in ponderous doubts. And also those stiffly clothed guards yawning and scrunching their faces, walking around the town gate unbothered. Every one of them appeared unaware of the other and of her. Yet the moonlight was mellow and all embracing.
Watching them, Wei Zhiruo couldn't help but recall her own time as a human. Like people seldom do to call back certain deeply closeted and forgotten memories kept under locked up chests burrowed deeper into layers of forgetfulness – she tried very hard to paint those hazy pictures.
She actually did remember her own time as a human in her previous life. She was young, the memories albeit a little vague, were still in good enough state for her to assess them. It was a magical time when her own mind hadn't been so noisy, so full of 'thoughts'. When it was nothing but clueless and in keeping of great calm – although it was unflinchingly separated from the harmonies of the world, from its secret talks bubbling all around her, its reiterated joys and humble hymns that could be heard even in rustling winds; they were in no way as suffocating.
She was unable to watch or hear the budding growth of a plant, or marvel at the churning of water and its majestic runes, or swirls of the cloud and its magical rules – she was also not stifled under their overbearing presence! Just like now - she was drowning in them!
Despite all that, she felt she was very lucky to have this ability. Having eyes that could see natural rules and runes and observe secrets of heaven and earth was not common. Even in her magical world, with endless tales of magical abilities and physiques that people could be born with, she had never heard of another soul having such weird abilities as her own! After reading several clan anthologies left by past ancestors, she not only never found another person like herself, she also found that feeling what both inanimate and animate things thought, was near to an impossibility, because that would mean a person was a recipient to what a 'soul' thought or felt!
This amazing talent had helped her great deal but…it was also painfully overwhelming at times. At moments like these, she couldn't help but wonder - was the pain worth it? The answer was almost always - yes; with exceptions being such moments where there seemed to be no end to these foreign thoughts. But still, she would never trade this magical aspect of herself with anything!
"Perhaps it became worse," Wei Zhiruo mumbled, "because I changed back into a human?" But in the past when she was a human, there were none of these pervasive thoughts clamoring all day long, right?
She distractedly thought of when it all changed.
Once upon a time, long long time ago, in ages past and in some distant land, where common men and women dwelt and rejoiced in life, she too had been the daughter of such a common man. And she had nothing but thoughts of a common human. But then, like the fate of a butterfly that must break off its own cocoon to spread its wing, or die stifled in it– she had shed off her human limitations. Since then, that awakening, these thoughts had accompanied her, echoed with her, filled her with themselves and made itself heard and felt – and little by little, with each passing moment, she had encompassed a gap between the capabilities of what was humane.
In your lands, I stood forsaken
Deeply grooved in your barren soils;
With a soul maligned and a throat cut
–with all my voices undone.
"What an enchanting night." Wei Zhiruo mumbled.
It was a beautiful night indeed; a nightingale burst into one of the neatest of her songs, and the croaks of frogs appeared to be its accompaniment. Even pale moonlight wound its yarn and stars sparkled with unparalleled brilliance, peering through their mischievous eyes as if alluring their paramours. Even in Wei Zhiruo's stale eyes, one could peer brilliance, like thousands of scattered fragments had made its home there - settling blue and deep.
A nodding head curled up closer. With knees drawn back, her back curling into a circle, the tiny figure fell into a trembling slumber full of thoughts and dreams, lulled by the gentle swinging of the water ripples.